The present invention relates to electronic musical instruments and programs which can easily and promptly set a performance environment, suited for a manual performance, to (i.e., in accordance with) a music piece which a user wishes to perform. More particularly, the present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument and program which can set a performance environment while actually confirming or checking the content of a music piece using an external audio player.
Heretofore, there have been known electronic musical instruments which have an automatic performance-environment setting function, commonly called “music finder” or the like, for automatically setting, for each user-desired music piece, a performance environment (e.g., a manual-performance tone color, accompaniment style, tempo, effect, etc.) suited for a manual performance where a user operates performance operator members to generate tones. More specifically, pieces of information each for setting an electronic musical instrument to a performance environment suited for a manual environment of a user-desired music piece (this information will hereinafter be referred to as “performance-environment setting information”) and pieces of music piece character information, which are each indicative of characters of a music piece, such as a title (music piece name), artist name, player's name, composer's name, lyric writer's name, musical genre, etc. of the music piece and which are associated with the pieces of performance-environment setting information, are stored in advance in a database. Once a user enters some music piece character information, particular performance-environment setting information associated with the entered music piece character is identified, and then a performance environment is automatically set in the electronic musical instrument on the basis of the identified performance-environment setting information. In this manner, it is possible to easily and promptly set a performance environment suited for a music piece to be manually performed by the user itself (himself or herself) operating performance operator members.
However, even an electronic musical instrument having the aforementioned automatic performance-environment setting function would present the problem that, even when a performance environment suited for a selected music piece has been automatically set, it tends to be difficult for the user to manually perform the music piece if the user only knows the title, artist's name, etc. of the music piece and does not exactly know the content of the music piece, such as the lyric, musical score, tune and content of performance or if the user has completely forgot, or vaguely remembers only part of, the content of the music piece. Thus, there has also been proposed a technique that acquires music content (e.g., MIDI data, musical score data, lyric data and the like) pertaining to a desired music piece from a predetermined Web site via a communication network, such as the Internet and then presents the content of the music piece to a user on the basis of the acquired music content. One example of such a technique is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2006-276749. The technique disclosed in the No. 2006-276749 publication not only easily and promptly sets a performance environment for performing a user-desired music piece but also reproduces music content acquired from a Web site, so that the user can not only confirm or check the content of the music piece the user wishes to perform but also manually perform the music piece while being given performance assistance.
However, because there is a need to connect the electronic musical instrument to the communication network, the aforementioned known technique, which acquires music content pertaining to a desired music piece via a communication network and then presents the acquired music content to the user, can not of course be used in an environment where the electronic musical instrument is not connectable to the communication network, for example, because the communication network is inadequate (or has not been developed sufficiently) as an infrastructure or the electronic musical instrument is equipped with no communication interface. Further, the electronic musical instruments must be equipped with a storage device of a great storage capacity for storing acquired music content and a reproduction device for reproducing the acquired music content. However, such electronic musical instruments equipped with these devices tends to be inexpensive, and the aforementioned known technique can not be applied to already-existing electronic musical instruments, which would lead to various inconveniences.
In recent years, portable audio players (media players) have been popularly used, which are equipped with at least a music content storage function and music content reproduction function such that they can not only store many items of music content (digital data, such as MP3 data) in a storage device, such as a hard disk or semiconductor memory, housed in a small casing but also reproduce desired music content selected by a user from among the stored music content. Such audio players can also store, in addition to MP3 data, accessory information added to music content in association with music pieces although each such accessory information is not information directly pertaining to the music piece like the title, musical genre, etc. of the music piece; such accessory information will hereinafter referred to as “music-piece-appendant information” to distinguish from the above-mentioned music piece character information stored in the electronic musical instrument.
However, among the presently-known electronic musical instruments having the above-mentioned automatic performance environment setting information, there has heretofore been none which can effectively use an audio player to automatically set a performance environment in accordance with a user-desired music piece despite a great demand for such a sophisticated electronic musical instrument.